obama's side reminded everybody, look, governor romney has done a couple dozen debates over the last year or so. he's really good at it. so they're trying to tamp down expectations. then you got chris christie going out there saying, i think mitt romney is going to have an extraordinarily great wednesday night. everything is going to turn upside down. wait until thursday morning. everybody is going to be talking about how -- and i'm paraphrasing -- mitt romney kicked some butt. >> gretchen: it's so important to see these two men face-to-face on a stage together because look at your screen now. this is how we've seen them for the last couple of months. they might be in the same state, but they're not together. they're not on the same stage together. so really what you're learning about the candidates is what they're saying individually. not against each other. not necessarily being asked the same question at the same time. not being able to take each other to task and say, but wait a minute, you said this or you said that. i think this will be so important and that's why i hope that t